Stereoscopic and 3D visual communications for the future

This paper motivates the development of stereoscopic and 3D visual communication systems for the future and it presents final research results from the European ACTS project AC092 PANORAMA (PAckage for New OpeRational Autostereoscopic Multiview systems and Applications). There is a large potential in stereoscopic and 3D visual systems for broadcast and non-broadcast applications (e.g. teleconferencing, medicine) and in the consumer entertainment market. The concept of 3D telepresence will give the viewer a better feeling of "being present in the scene". It extends the video conferencing concept, so that participants can use nonverbal aspects of communication (eye contact, spatial perception, gestures, facial expressions) in the same way as they would in a face-to-face meeting. The objective of PANORAMA was therefore to provide new technology to overcome limitations of current video communication systems by introducing 3D telepresence. To follow this objective, 14 European partners from Universities, Research Institutes and Industry united in the PANORAMA consortium. Each PANORAMA partner is most experienced on stereoscopic and 3D imaging technologies and applications. Highlights of PANORAMA are two major demonstrator systems for video communications with 3D telepresence, and application demonstrations in the fields of medicine, stereoscopic inspection and measurement in industrial environments, and MPEG-4 scene composition for client-server applications. The PANORAMA project itself and a number of results are also documented online at http://www.tnt.uni-hannover.de/project/eu/panorama/.